


Sailor's Disease

by Elizabeth Perry (watersword)



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Gen, Juvenilia, Syphilis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-07-08
Updated: 2005-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:04:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watersword/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Perry





	Sailor's Disease

Drip-drip. Drip-drip.

It's enough to drive a man mad, it is.

Sea turtles; pray god Will never finds out that falsehood; but this is why. Why, m'dear. Got nothing to do with heat, unless it's that pertickalar kind of heat, all warm and clinging, the kind you'd be mad to want to escape; nothin' to do with the island, not even the second time, though it would have been enough for any other man; not even the loss of the _Pearl_, who's gone now, never to return.

Drip-drip.

Drip-drip.

None of that.

None of that now, lass. It's not so bad, to say the truth — he's sailed well, and doesn't that count for more 'n this?

This, yes, this — this madness. Madness, yes, for so it is. They called him mad long before he ever was, but so he is, and always shall be. The mad captain, daft Jack, but they meant reckless, laughing, triumphant, shiny; not this. Not this indignity (he had dignity, lass, don't mock it when it's gone, for so it is) of drooling and heart adrift in his chest and forgetting everything, even the swell of the sea.

They said Jack Sparrow was born to the swell of the sea and would die to it; they lied. Jack Sparrow was born in the grip of an officer of His Majesty on the streets in Dublin (but the man wearing red velvet had no need of the shilling and the boy newly become Jack did, he'd protest if he remembered), he'll die not knowing where he is, or who, or why.

Drip-drip. Drip-drip-drip.

Clearly, you've never been to Singapore. Jack has. Funny how he still knows that; but then, it's not something you can forget. Bloody unforgettable, Singapore. Singapore, where the whores are silk and bone and oil, and the whips aren't whips at all but

Drip-drip.

That's Singapore for you. You can't speak their lingo, no worries. They'll _drip_ what they want to know out of you till the words drip-drip off your tongue like so much salivasaltseasalt. And they'll hand you a girl who's already adrip-drip.

Singapore. Drip-drip on his forehead, the water (oil?) (rum?) drip-drip, the whore tasting like oil and rum, felt like seawater, and now he's all drip-drip.

It's a sailor's disease, and he'd take comfort in that if he could. He was in Singapore. He was in Dublin, and he told stories about both, or neither, and he was marooned on an island, once with rum, once with a girl (boy?) with golden eyes or hair or both (there was a girl) (there wasn't a girl), and sea turtles rescued him because he loved them, because they loved him, because the _Pear_ (the _Nymph_) loved him, and he sailed the seven seas (what's seven? don't rightly know, lass) (what's a sea? used to know, I know) and he was Captain Jack Sparrow.

Drip-drip.

But he's not. Not now. Now. Now — drip-drip — he's just what he is, and that not very much at all but drip-drip.

If he squints past the dripping haze (is it raining?), he might be able to see golden coins, or eyes, or a bottle of rum, but he doesn't remember that anymore. If you don't look, you can't see, aye, lass? Aye.

(there was a ship)

(once upon a time)

(drip-drip)

That way madness lies.


End file.
